Amelia Opie Biography
Amelia Opie
Amelia Opie, (born Amelia Alderson) was born in Norwich, England on November 12th 1769 to her mother Amelia Biggs and her father James Alderson. Opie was raised in a position of relative privilege, owing to her father’s position as a well-to-do Physician. As an only daughter, Opie was subject to the stern but “good sense judgement” (Brightwell 4) of her mother until Biggs’s death in 1784. The impact of Opie’s mother was quite profound, however, as Amelia would later attribute parts of her writing to the impact her mother had made upon her. One such instance is in “Portrait of The First” in her poetry collection Lays for the Dead where she makes mention of a “mother’s firm yet mild, reproof Ha[ving] sent [her], pale and tearful, to my room.” (Opie). This single reference to her mother indicates one of the ways which Opie remembered her mother: through punishment and discipline. Despite this painful remembrance, and the “judicious training of her mother” (Brightwell 5) Opie would always credit her mother’s gentle disposition, and piety. At this young age, Amelia was also struck with the power of the sensory and experiential, relaying in a biography both the “pure heartfelt delight” of blue sky and the “ringing peel of bells” (Brightwell 6), alongside the “world of woe” she saw in the eyes of an asylum patient she visited. Amelia’s understanding of these powerful moments of expression are helpful to frame her later work for which she is best known.
These formative years also built Opie’s social circles within Norwich, in large part due to her father, who influenced Amelia politically, by sparking her interest in the politics of the assize Norwich courts, and in the arts through her formal education in French, music, and dancing. These later talents allowed her to easily impress her father’s social circle and house guests. Amelia’s skills went beyond mere entertainment however as she had created multiple ballads and one tragic play by age eighteen.
Influenced by her father’s “ultra liberal views” (Brightwell 8) Opie’s talents would only expand in the next years of her life as her sphere of connections expanded outwards, eventually encompassing members such as William Godwin, (a well-known political reformer), Thomas Holcroft (a supporter and defender of the French revolution), and Mary Wollstonecraft (a radical feminist figure). An instance which solidified Opie as a member of this social circle was her support at the treason trials of 1794 where liberal M.P’s were arrested for their attempts to reform the British electoral system. In spite of the attempt, the so-called radicals were acquitted much to the pleasure of Opie (Kelly). It is also from this Group that Amelia would meet a history and landscape painter; her soon-to-be husband John Opie in 1798. At this time, Amelia moved to London from Norwich. By all accounts, this marriage was fitting for Amelia Opie as John “did not check [her] ambition” (Brightwell 12) but rather encouraged it. While John clearly had a positive influence on Amelia Opie, it should be noted that some biographies such as Memoir of Amelia Opie by Cecelia Lucy Brightwell, effusive praise is given to John’s instructive “genius and superior sense” (Brightwell 12) as to diminish the independent ability of Amelia’s first published work The Father and Daughter.
The father and Daughter embodies the common theme of Opie’s early written works; the focus on “sympathy and sentiment” (Pierce 3). The Story itself concerns Agnes Fitzhenry whose surprise elopement with a seemingly immoral and abusive man Clifford, has left her with an illegitimate son, and a dying father driven mad from shock. Eventually, she is forgiven for her moral crimes by her father, only to die soon after. While this first novel was “received with much warmth and approval by the public at large” (Brightwell 12) the intertext of the writing is feminist and subversive. While this novel can be read in a fairly didactic manner as a warning against fallen women and the sinful actions of immorality, its intertextual reading reveals the novel’s subversive intent. Specifically, “Opie’s narrative works to make [Agnes] an example of failed femininity, but in fact it ends up demonstrating that “femininity” itself is a failure” (Pershing 3) by the manner in which society itself enacts strict limitations on the female role which only allow them to act and exist while fulfilling certain functions and societal duties. In this manner, Opie situates the previously fallen woman as a “female warrior on a domestic battlefield.” (Matthew 8) By “placing her female speaker in a suspended state,” this pathos in turn encourages a sentimental reading, connecting the reader to the unfairness of the female situation, in turn, legitimizing female suffrage (Pierce 4). This common theme of subversive domestic fiction is a throughline throughout Opie’s subsequent works such as the 1804 work Adaline Mowbry which fictionalizes Mary Wollstonecraft’s relationship with William Godwin in order to critique the institution of marriage.
In the midst of her successful career, John Opie died in 1807, prompting Amelia Opie to move Back to Norwich where her “intercourse with the world and its society was laid aside.” (Brightwell 27) In order for her to tend to her father for the remainder of his life. At this time, she became re-acquainted with the Gurneys, who were family friends and devout Quakers. In turn, Opie’s relationship with the family led her to leave the Unitarians (her prior faith,) in order to convert to Quakerism in 1814 to become a member of the “Society of Friends”. With this change of faith Opie also changed her view on writing as it related to the Quaker doctrine; specifically, that she “must not write pure fiction; [she] must not lye.” (Kelly) With this alternate view on writing, Opie would only go on to write didactic and ethical works. With this new perspective, Opie focussed her later years on acts of philanthropy and would visit “workhouses, hospitals, prisons, and the poor as well as promoting a refuge for reformed prostitutes.” (Kelly) This new focus on philanthropy paired well with Opie’s writing abilities, as she would go on to use her talent to write short anti-slavery poems such as “The Black Man’s Lament,” and the “Negro Boy’s tale.”
Opie’s abolitionist work would later come to a head? at the London World Anti-Slavery conference in 1840, where she represented her home town of Norwich. From this action, one can see that in spite of her years and change in faith, Amelia Opie maintained the drive for equality and social critique which coloured all her early works of writing. After a period of declining health on December 2nd 1853 Amelia Opie died and was buried her father’s grave (Kelly).
Works Cited
Brown, Susan, Patricia Clements, and Isobel Grundy, eds. Amelia Opie entry: Life screen within Orlando: Women's Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Online, 2006. <http://orlando.cambridge.org.proxy.lib.sfu.ca/>. 21 October 2021
Brightwell, C. L. Memoir of Amelia Opie. Published by the Religious Tract Society, 56, Paternoster Row, & 164, Piccadilly, 1855.
Hattaway, Meghan Burke. “Amelia Opie's Fiction: Contagious and Recuperative Texts.” European Romantic Review, vol. 24, no. 5, Routledge, 2013, pp. 555–77, doi:10.1080/10509585.2013.828203.
Kelly, Gary. "Opie [née Alderson], Amelia (1769–1853), novelist and poet." Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. 23. Oxford University Press. Date of access 21 Oct. 2021, https://www-oxforddnb-com.proxy.lib.sfu.ca/view/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-20799
Matthew, Patricia A. “BIOGRAPHY AND MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT IN ADELINE MOWBRAY AND VALPERGA.” Women's Writing : the Elizabethan to Victorian Period, vol. 14, no. 3, Taylor & Francis Group, 2007, pp. 382–98, doi:10.1080/09699080701644915.
Meghan Burke Hattaway (2013) Amelia Opie's Fiction: Contagious and Recuperative Texts, European Romantic Review, 24:5, 555-577, DOI: 10.1080/10509585.2013.828203
Opie, Amelia. Adeline Mowbray, or, The Mother and Daughter : a Tale / by Mrs. Opie. Printed for
Longman, Hurst, Rees & Orme ; A. Constable, 1805.
Opie, Amelia. The Negro Boy's Tale / by Mrs. Opie. Printed by R. Peart.
Opie, Amelia. The Father and Daughter, a Tale, in Prose, by Mrs. Opie. Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, 1813.
Pershing, Teresa M. “Unbecoming: Desire and Futurity in Amelia Alderson Opie's Dangers of Coquetry.” European Romantic Review, vol. 28, no. 5, Routledge, 2017, pp. 571–84, doi:10.1080/10509585.2017.1362341.
Pierce, John. “The Suspension of Sensibility in Amelia Opie's Early Poetry.” Romanticism (Edinburgh), vol. 21, no. 3, Edinburgh University Press, 2015, pp. 228–37, doi:10.3366/rom.2015.0240.
Ty, Eleanor. Empowering the Feminine. University of Toronto Press, 1998, doi:10.3138/9781442674394.
“1794 Treason Trials.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 16 Mar. 2021, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1794_Treason_Trials#Aftermath.