ABSTRACT
This chapter examines a form of Parliamentary legislation that highlights the laws private regulation of the propertied orphan, showing how the law regulates the child by regulating his or her property while placing him or her within the family. It turns its attention to the propertied orphan and attempts to determine why that orphan figure has not been fully historicized. Emmeline is unique in its attention to the legal situation of the propertied orphan; it provides the rare example of an eighteenth-century novel in which the connections between the romantic elements and the legal elements of orphaning are not only acknowledged. The chapter examines orphans are often drawn into disputes concerning the lease, mortgaging, or sale of an estate; in order to resolve such disputes, the structuring of the estate in last wills and testaments and marriage settlements must be investigated. Cynthia Klekar offers the analyses using theories of gift exchange to argue that Emmeline interrogates structures of obligation.
