It’s a feat less visually dazzling than a tightrope walker slowly moving between two high-rise buildings, but Henrietta, the protagonist of Charlotte Lennox’s novel by the same name, puts on a display that is strangely akin to the daring tempter of fate. In the context of 18th-century mores for young women, Henrietta executes an exquisite balancing act of etiquette and self-respect, as she contends with a flurry of outside forces. The consequences of her failing to navigate deceitful suitors, overbearing ladies, and tyrannical family relations might not come with a price tag of death, but it could easily amount to a loss of virtue and dignity. And that, of course, is no trivial matter.
First published in 1758, Henrietta gives readers a bold and self-determined heroine. After the loss of her father, and then her mother, she’s faced with a series of terribly trying circumstances. In each one, Henrietta nevertheless tries to do what is proper, though not at the expense of violating her moral conscience. In a novel populated by all sorts of unsavory, scheming, and egotistical characters, it’s a gargantuan task.
Indeed, on some level her trials are almost Odyssean: she faces myriad plights that test various aspects of her character. There’s no lotus eaters in this story, but Henrietta is given plenty of chances to take the easy way out. She doesn’t. She declines offers from wealthy suitors, young and old. She remains Protestant, even though converting to Catholicism would keep her as the sole heir to her aunt’s fortune. She eschews certain social expectations, even if doing so means becoming a pariah or living in penury.
As the reader works through this novel about the travails of an 18th-century Englishwoman, two general questions run through the reader’s mind. Will her precarious situation ever come to an end? And, even more optimistically, will she ever fall in love herself, rather than be forced to reject suitor after suitor.
These questions make us turn the pages as much as anything else, and for good reason. But there’s another pleasure to be found in this novel about a prudent heroine amidst a spectacle of money-grubbers, airheads, and narcissists — and that is Lennox’s subtle but impressive craft. With few exceptions, rarely does the novel feel redundant or lifeless, despite Henrietta’s series of entanglements in similar scenarios. In less skillful hands, this story would likely amount to a tedious mush of homogenous scenes, ultimately leaving the reader uninterested.
But Lennox, with her artful construction, avoids such a weary result. The novel’s medias res opening — and the following scenes — is indicative of the finely wrought narrative ahead.
We first meet Henrietta as she desperately hopes to get a spot on a crowded London-bound stagecoach. A fracas breaks out about the prospect of another rider, but eventually she gets a seat. She’s then chatted up by a character named Miss Woodby, who the narrator describes in about the least flattering terms imaginable: “Her features…could not be called irregular, because few faces were ever distinguished with a set more uniformly bad.” Garrulous and eager for a friend, the two young women talk. Henrietta explains some of her anguished situation: she’s just fled from Lady Meadows, her aunt and benefactor, over a forced marriage.
With that, the plot is up and running. As Miss Woodby and Henrietta see each other over the following days, our heroine tells her a great deal more — indeed, the story of how her parents met, followed by her own perilous story, up to the point of getting on the stagecoach. Upon the close of Henrietta’s narration, we’re back in the present. Unfortunately for our heroine, the chaos has only just begun.
Lennox’s decision to craft the opening of the novel in this way not only makes for an interesting start, but adroitly illuminates (and foreshadows) Henrietta’s past and future struggles. Indeed, the backstory of Henrietta’s parents highlights the dangers of going against the grain — in their case, marrying for love rather than money or status. The decision comes with severe consequences: Henrietta’s father is disowned by much of his family, leaving him and wife to subsist and raise their children with very little means.
The rest of the novel is crafted just as masterfully as the beginning. Lennox adeptly inserts her heroine into a variety of situations, while prolonging the one or two scenarios that could most feasibly remove her from her tangled predicament.
At times, it can be a challenge to fully intuit the magnitude of Henrietta’s circumstances and dilemmas, owing to the drastically different mores — social and otherwise — that guide our modern lives. Henrietta, however, is not just a novel about the plight of a young woman; it’s also a deeply satirical novel, exposing the many foibles and follies of human nature. These elements are much more obvious to the modern reader. And since Henrietta encounters no shortage of folly, there are plenty of occasions in Lennox’s novel to appreciate the absurdities on display.
There’s Lady Autumn, for instance, who dresses in the fashion of an adolescent and likes nothing more than for people to treat her as the hallmark of youth. In reality, she’s fifty. There’s the wealthy Sir Isaac Darby, a senescent man who, despite the vast difference in age, puts on “a ridiculous display of gallantry” as he tries to woo the youthful Henrietta. There’s Miss Cordwain, a young lady who views marriage as little more than a mechanism to rise in status — and indeed she works herself into a tizzy imagining how hypothetical marriages would, or would not, elevate her above her female peers.
Henrietta is a world apart from all of these figures. She’s not interested in acquiring prestige, wealth, or attention. Nor is she steered by a pursuit for pleasure. Rather, it’s her deeply held principles and ardent commitment for doing what is genuine and unadulterated that guide her behavior. This is what makes her the bold, resolute, and unique heroine that she is.
Of course, they’re also the reason why she finds herself pitted in so many daunting circumstances. Though an imminently sympathetic protagonist to us, in the eyes of many characters, Henrietta is either an obstinate fool or a reckless young woman. Her own uncle castigates her for not switching religions, if doing so would bring about advantageous results. Henrietta refuses, and is thereby disowned.
This type of event is par for the course; Henrietta rarely catches a break. And at nearly every turn, a new situation arises that once more puts her back against the wall. Even more striking, is that Henrietta navigates these trials almost entirely alone. With her parents deceased, her guardian away, and the adults around her either fools or antagonists, she’s left to her own devices. Fortunately for her, she’s shrewd in spades, and one of Charlotte Lennox’s most emboldened heroines.
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Lennox, Charlotte, Ruth Perry, and Susan Carlile. Henrietta. Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 2010.
Spectatio 