Amelia Opie Criticism
Amelia Opie (1769-1853), an English novelist, poet, and essayist, is recognized for her significant contributions to the transition of the English novel of manners, bridging the gap between the works of Samuel Richardson and Jane Austen. Known for her naturalistic and emotive narratives, Opie's major works, The Father and Daughter and Adeline Mowbray, explored social issues and provided moral lessons through the depiction of ordinary lives. These stories, praised for their pathos and realistic portrayals, engaged with the theme of the fallen woman, which offers a lens into the societal norms and concerns of her time, as discussed by scholars like Susan Staves and Gary Kelly.
Born in Norwich, Opie was influenced by her father's intellectual circle, which included notable figures such as William Godwin and Mary Wollstonecraft. Her early works did not garner much acclaim, but her marriage to painter John Opie catalyzed her literary career, leading to the publication of her most successful novels. Despite initial popularity, her later works, including Temper and Valentine's Eve, became more didactic and less engaging, a shift partly attributed to her increasing involvement with Quakerism, as noted by critics such as Margaret Eliot MacGregor.
Opie's writings consistently reflected her moralistic outlook, often addressing themes of women's roles and social justice, such as in her abolitionist work, The Black Man's Lament. The critical reception of her work was mixed; while her prose was celebrated for its emotional depth, her poetry was criticized for lacking technical proficiency, despite its sentimental appeal. Her decline in literary prominence coincided with her deepening Quaker beliefs, which increasingly influenced her didactic style. Overall, Opie remains a subject of study for her portrayal of early 19th-century societal issues and her subtle questioning of traditional social values, a complexity highlighted by critics like Claudia L. Johnson and Roxanne Eberle.
Contents
- Principal WORKs
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Essays
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Review of The Father and Daughter
(summary)
In the following excerpt, the critic describes the favorable impression made by Opie's The Father and Daughter in regard to its ability to describe pathos and distress and to elicit the appropriate feelings in the reader.
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Review of Poems by Amelia Opie
(summary)
In the following review, the critic commends the shorter works of Opie's Poems for their elegance in sentiment and pathos but finds fault with the longer works for their lack of technical correctness, their lack of originality, and their overuse of reflection, inversion, and personification.
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Review of Simple Tales
(summary)
In the following article, the critic favorably reviews Opie's Simple Tales for its ability to present human nature and feelings in an artless but graceful and accurate way.
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Review of The Warrior's Return and Other Poems
(summary)
In the following review, the critic praises Opie 's The Warrior's Return and Other Poems for its originality and the polish of its meter.
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Review of The Warrior's Return and Other Poems
(summary)
In the following review, the critic censures Opie's The Warrior's Return and Other Poems for its lack of rigorous poetics such as good rhyming and for its waste of sentiment on topics remote from the present day.
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Review of Temper; or Domestic Scenes
(summary)
In the following review, the critic counterbalances praise of Opie's Temper; or Domestic Scenes with mention of such defects as excessive didacticism and the use of unlikely circumstances.
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Review of Valentine's Eve
(summary)
In the following review, the critic commends Opie 's Valentine's Eve for the virtuous example of its heroine, but finds fault with the dialogue and the portrayal of various characters.
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Review of New Tales
(summary)
In the following review, the critic commends Opie 's New Tales for the realistic depiction of various characters. Much variety and amusement will be found in these volumes: but, in the tale of the 'Ruffian Boy,' this justly celebrated writer departs from her usual practice of inculcating an important moral in every narrative: since this is a tale of fear and sorrow in which we cannot sympathise with the characters, and from which no higher lesson can be learned than the old rule that young ladies in a ball-room must not refuse one partner and afterward dance with another.
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Review of Tales of the Heart
(summary)
In the following review, the critic finds fault with Opie's Tales of the Heart for its inability to stir the emotions, the presence of unlikely situations, poor diction, and a lack of care in describing everyday events.
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Heroines of Miss Ferrier, Mrs. Opie, and Mrs. Radcliffe
(summary)
In the following excerpt, Howells describes Opie's work as being allied to the nature school of writing and as achieving its effects through great imaginative inventiveness and the inclusion of extraordinary accidents.
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The Novel of Manners and Jane Austen
(summary)
In the following excerpt, Elton discusses the context for Opie's writings, the influence of her own morality on her writing, and her ability to present pathos, dialogue, the embroiled situation, and personal portraits.
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Introduction to Amelia Alderson Opie: Worldling and Friend
(summary)
In the following essay, MacGregor discusses Opie's moralistic purpose in writing as well as Opie's response to issues of her day.
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Amelia Opie and Mary Tighe: "Elegy to the Memory of the Late Duke of Bedford"; "Psyche," with Other Poems
(summary)
In the following excerpt, Reiman discusses Opie's purpose in writing fiction, her social concerns expressed in her poetry, and her lack of technical skill in writing poetry.
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Discharging Debts: The Moral Economy of Amelia Opie's Fiction
(summary)
In the following essay, Kelly asserts that the underlying pattern of Opie's prose fiction is the heroine's incurring of a real or apparent moral, social, or financial debt, which is repaid with inner suffering and some public expression of this suffering, and which is terminated by reconciliation with the creditor.
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British Seduced Maidens
(summary)
In the following essay, Staves discusses social responses to the seduction of maidens, which provides the historical context for the theme of the seduced maiden in Opie's work in general and in Opie's The Father and Daughter in particular.
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Amelia Opie, Lady Caroline Lamb, and Maria Edgeworth: Official and Unofficial Ideology
(summary)
In the following excerpt, Kelly argues that the writings of Opie (among others) demonstrate an adherence to traditional social values in the moral and outcome of their fictions, but also a questioning of those values in their examination of the lives of the central characters who suffer because of those values.
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Women, Publishers, and Money, 1790-1820
(summary)
In the following excerpt, Fergus and Thaddeus examine the financial dealings of Amelia Alderson Opie with her publishers as an example of the social changes affecting women around the beginning of the nineteenth-century.
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The Novel of Crisis
(summary)
In the following excerpt, Johnson suggests that Opie endorsed the politically conservative status quo through her main plot but used parallel plots to question established social values and to promote reform for attitudes about women and marriage.
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'D. D.' Revealed?
(summary)
In the following essay, Ra'ad argues for identifying the 'D.D.' found in Melville's correspondence to Evert Duyckinck with Opie's Detraction Displayed because (among other things) Opie's work represented a disappearing type of social commentary on contemporary morals.
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Amelia Opie's Adeline Mowbray: Diverting the Libertine Gaze; or, The Vindication of a Fallen Woman
(summary)
In the following essay, Eberle explores Opie's criticism of conservative and radical expectations of women's behavior and philosophy through her novel Adeline Mowbray.
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Review of The Father and Daughter
(summary)
- Further Reading