ABSTRACT
Amelia Opie's novel develops a clear but complex parallel between marriage and dueling as social institutions governing feminine and masculine honor respectively. The pivotal plot device of Opie's novel is the duel between Frederic Glenmurray, Adeline's philosopher-lover, and Sir Patrick O'Carrol, the Irish libertine intent on both marrying the mother and seducing the daughter. For the sheltered and idealistic Adeline, unaware of the implications of "the life of honour", the situation is rather different. Glenmurray's masculinity is a combination of reason and sensibility, embodied in what is clearly for Adeline an erotically charged physical being. Like Political Justice, Adeline Mowbray treats the chastity or sexual honor of the individual woman as separate and distinct from marriage. As Hannah More would have recognized, this phrase bears a "double sense". In fact, Adeline discriminates carefully between marriage as an institution instrumental in child-rearing and property transfer and as an institution necessary for the preservation of female sexual honor.
