ABSTRACT
Maria Edgeworth has no 'story to tell' of her own because she must relay her father's. The epigraph reveals that she has had to transform herself into a 'literary lady', into a 'creature of her father's imagination who was understandably anxious for and about her father's control'. When Maria Edgeworth casts Ithuriel's spear into the narrative matrix of Belinda, a novel about the chicanery of men and the vulnerability of women, therefore, it is no casual allusion. Possession of Ithuriel's spear would disclose the truth of suitors' intentions, the true face of male desire, the actual scope of male privilege and power, which men, like Satan, can easily cloak and mask. Detecting counterfeit charm in Belinda explains Edgeworth's clever incorporation of Ithuriel's spear into the narrative, as well as her own consistent allusions to Satan's own charm in Paradise Lost. In the end, Paradise Lost is not the only Miltonic intertext useful in interpreting Belinda.
