ABSTRACT
At first glance, Charlotte Lennox’s last novel Euphemia appears to be a typical example of the disinclination to stylistic and ideological development that characterizes much epistolary fiction at the end of the eighteenth century. The novel relates to a number of social and class issues, but encourages neither change nor a debate of radical political ideas of the Romantic era. While masculine stereotypes of behaviour as well as coarse attitudes of the nouveaux riches are mocked, hierarchies of gender and rank are accepted without protest. The portrayal of British colonialism alone suggests a critical evaluation of its practices. As Lennox was about sixty years old at the novel’s inception and publication, the slightly ageist judgement that the text represents a ‘worthy accomplishment of an old and respectable “Lady”, somewhat out of touch with the production of the day’29 seems tenable. Moreover, the morals of Euphemia are steeped in stoic ideals and Christian resignation to fate, both unlikely incitements to revolution. Peter Garside notes that fashionable authors of the day, including Charlotte Smith and Ann Radcliffe, had shaped readers’ preferences for sentimental tales and Gothic adventures,30 modes of narration that are decidedly different from Lennox’s well-measured contemplations, and her disciplined composition of Euphemia’s plot and story.
