ABSTRACT
In analyzing Women, people are tempted to hesitate which end of the tale they should begin with. De Courcy, a youth of large property, of talents and of virtue, fair and graceful in person, and cultivated in taste and understanding, but of a disposition at once fickle and susceptible, appears as the hero of the tale. The threats of the demoniacal personage were insufficient to deter him from forcing his way to the interior of the hut, where he beheld a beautiful, but almost inanimate form, lie stretched on a wretched pallet. He in vain attempted to assimilate his conversation to that of the party, by quoting some religious works as were known to him. He is therefore received, on the footing of an acknowledged lover, into the house of the Wentworths, exposed, however, to the persecutions of the father and many of his visitors, who were resolved at all rates to achieve his conversion.
