ABSTRACT
This chapter examines how reading, both literal and fi gurative, is represented in the works of Maria Edgeworth, focusing particularly on Belinda (1801). It argues that the novel highlights the diffi culties of reading and interpretation through the metaphor of the countenance as a portrait. Late eighteenth-century discussions of portraiture, especially in Joshua Reynolds’s Discourses on Art, suggest that this was a form in transition, with its traditional association with ‘likeness’, or the accurate representation of the subject, coming under increasing challenge. Belinda exploits the portrait’s uncertain status at the time, as well as the late eighteenth-century interest in the ancient art of physiognomy. Attention to Edgeworth’s pedagogical works, including Practical Education (1798) and Letters for Literary Ladies (1795) suggests that in her view reading should be an active rather than a passive process, and should be a stimulus to thought and rational enquiry. In this respect Edgeworth follows Inchbald in recommending critical and refl ective reading. Yet in Belinda this way of reading proves hard to achieve, especially for the heroine. Belinda fi nds that the reading of countenances, and other characters in general, is frequently problematic and dependent on subjective interpretation. There are also a number of episodes involving real portraits in Belinda; these too are diffi cult to read, and generate complex debates over ‘character’, a term that was often held to be in opposition to ‘likeness’ in late eighteenth-century theories of portraiture. The chapter concludes with a brief discussion of another, more famous, episode involving a portrait in Jane Austen’s Emma (1816), which again raises thorny disagreements concerning the interpretation of character.
