The Father and Daughter
expectation and subversion in Amelia Opie’s The Father and Daughter
Amelia Opie’s The Father and Faughter is a moral tale of an unjust woman being punished for her role in a socially unacceptable act. This happens when she is tricked into following a libertine Clifford into an il advised marriage, wherein before she becomes married, she is impregnated and left alone. This tale however can be seen as an attempt not to critique female folly, but rather the social structures which destroy women in the first place. Through the structure of The Father and Daughter including the use of the dedication and preface where Opie situates herself as socially adherent, Opie is able to create a unique piece of fiction, capable of subverting socially accepted views on womanhood.
One of the first things which the reader is presented with after the title is the dedication to which Opie credits her father. This dedication is interesting for the extreme comparison Opie makes in order to ingratiate the work namely, that Opie compares her dedication to her father as to a nation worshiping a “god” for the bounty they receive. The dedication is interesting in its own right for who it omits, namely Jhon Opie, who “did not check [her] ambition” (12 Brightwell) but encouraged it during their marriage. In dedicating her first book this way, and excluding her husband, Opie is extenuating the value of her father in her life. Seeing as this book is primarily about the desire for Agnes to re-establish herself in the eyes of her father this dedication can be appreciated even further for what it is; a soft mirroring of Agnes ’desires seen through Opie. Also interesting is the terms which Opie choses throughout her dedication. Opie specifically addresses her father by the title Sir. By using a title of superiority, Opie once again establishes her fealty; later expanded by comparing herself to a worshiper of her god-father. By placing herself in a position of lower status, Opie is showing (at least outwardly) that she fully adheres to the idea of the male-female hierarchy, and the father daughter hierarchy. This understanding is significant, because in their own way, these hierarchies become central themes of the novel itself. Right from the outset then Opie indicates that does not intend to subvert any boundaries in the creation of the Father and Daughter contrastingly, the work itself can be viewed in a subversive manner.
Opie continues this narrative humbling in the preface by situating her piece of prose as a non-novel. Opie goes on to explain her reasoning for this re-situation of The Father and Daughter is for fear of the “danger” of misleading the audience’s expectations of “strong character, comic situation, bustle, and variety of incident” (VI Opie) to an unfavorable reception of for her work. By separating the story from the structure of novel, Opie would be able to unbind it from the social context of what a novel could and should be; the tool of an upper-class society, reflecting on social conditions. By not situating her work as a novel, Opie escapes the expectation of a novel as having a “deep suspicion of the social”(42 Kelly) which is otherwise a foundational aspect of sentimentalism. This choice is integral to the story as a whole, because without the assumption of criticism, an audience may have been more likely to consume the work without questioning what it says about society and why it is saying it. It is as though by situating the work as a “tale,” Opie aligns it closer to the didacticism of simpler works, wherein the lessons and truths taught are accepted as moral fact. One review by the monthly magazine indicates the positive reception, speaking only to the emotion of the novel as having “pathos enough to affect the heart of the most callous reader.” (archive) The reality of Father and daughter is that it lines up very neatly with some of the 18th century sentimental novels of the time in accordance to Gary Kelly’s work on English Fiction of the Romantic period. Agnes despite her social folly is seen as the protagonist of the novel, and fits into the trend of woman characters as prominent protagonists of sentimental fiction “because of their supposedly finer, more emotional natures.” (42 Kelly) Along side this is The Father and Daughter critiques the idea of the mistress system; a social understanding and treatment of women wherein, “Women are forced to compete with one another in the arts of coquetry to gain and then hold the affections of their master” (216 Kelly). Agnes herself is put in this system outright by Clifford, as Agnes slowly discovers that her love has no desire to marry her, but merely to keep her as a mistress.
Agnes’s placement into the mistress system can be seen as a moment of social commentary, because Clifford, the upholder of the mistress system, is situated as the conniving villain, who breaks Agnes, the innocent and overly trusting lady. Even the extreme lengths that Clifford goes through to deceive Agnes can be seen as an extension of the mistress system, as Agnes herself can be viewed of the victim of Clifford’s intentional misleading actions. By tricking Agnes into thinking her father is remarried, and lying to her about the illness of his own, Clifford is elevated to an almost theatrical level of villainy. In the face of the two character’s differences, readers who support the mistress system would be confronted with having to side with the motives of a clear villain, where those who rejected the mistress system could feel emotionally vindicated that they are not siding with the villain.
Agnes’s innocence also heightens this dichotomy, and is displayed clearly through the scene at the theater. Here, Agnes is only made fully aware of her situation through the conversation of two men, who treat the whole situation as gossip. This gossip is then contrasted by Agnes’s “screaming aloud” anguish, as he realizes her life has been destroyed. This instance can also be seen as social critique, as the difference between the social reaction to Clifford’s infidelity and Agnes’s decision to leave her father is put on full display. It becomes increasingly difficult to view Agnes as deserving ridicule when the basis of her actions is the ploy of another. Even in her decision to leave her father, her decision is predicated on the idea that she believed the “elopement was the most effectual means of securing her father's happiness. (17 Opie) Agnes Where Clifford’s reputation still stands as “one of the cleverest fellows in England,” (42 Opie) Agnes becomes an outcast in her hometown, perceived as an “awful,” “hardened wretch.” (151 Opie) Why then is this treatment so extreme? As noted by Megan Burke Hattaway “the intense suffering of Opie’s transgressive heroines remains[s] difficult to reconcile” (4 Hattaway) if this text is to be read as feminist in any true capacity. This is due to the fact that she is still punished brutally by the society which she is confined to. I think the answer to this comes with an understanding of Opie’s social critiques. When the degree to which Agnes is condemned by society is contrasted by her generous kindness such as her tireless work to heal her father or the wishes of happiness to her friend Caroline is repeated continually through the text, Agnes’s suffering becomes the catalyst for a social choice: whether to uphold the unfair social standards which can so easily destroy a good woman, or rather, empathise with such suffering and act as an agent of social change.
Despite being a fictional work, Opie’s character of Agnes in The Father and daughter seems to reflect many of Opie’s real-life beliefs. Opie was part of the “ultra-liberal” (15 Brightwell) group in her hometown of Norwich England who at the time would have been considered a “Whig reformist” (Oxford). She was also noted for her “tenderness towards those who have to bear a large share of the heavier burdens of life.” (15 Brightwell). This tenderness is transferred to the character of Agnes, and is reflected throughout the text in multiple different ways; most significantly of which is through the depiction of and interaction with treatment of the mentally ill, and the impoverished.
One of the most significant moments for this commentary is when Agnes talks to the cottager for the first time, where screaming from “the new bedlam” (Opie 93) punctuate the conversation with pain. The cottager goes on to express pity for “the poor creatures” (Opie 93) who laugh when they have reason to cry. This moment can be seen as social commentary on the treatment of the mentally disabled, as their suffering is brought into the full vision of the reader. In Opie’s time just as in our contemporary period there is a constant willingness to push those at the lower level of society out of our vision. It is as though by rendering the mentally ill invisible, society does not have to recognize the reality of the mentally ill, and the brutality they are subjected to, and completely other them from society. The work of the philosopher Emanual Levinas, Totality and Infinity, helps to describe the role of the “other”, non self entity in the creation of selfhood. One of the central concepts of Levinas’s work is the construction of the self and the other as distinct entities. For Levinas the “I’s encounter with the face of the Other that puts the existence and egoism of the I into question and calls it to responsibility.” (Capili 678) in turn the “self…is awakened to its responsibility for the Other”. (Capili 678) In this manner, by including moments such as the cottager explaining “I dare say it was only an unruly one whom they were beating”(50 Opie) the reality of mentally ill’s treatment is un-silenced, and in turn calls the reader to responsibility for their roll in such painful experience. This instance acts in a similar manner to Opie’s framing of Agnes, as once again, the reality of socialized female treatment is un-silenced to call readers to responsibility.
Through the lens of fiction, and by situating her along with her work as part of the “socially acceptable,” Opie creates a unique situation where her first novel can confront her readers with harsh critiques on the treatment of the infirmed, but also the social double standard of the infidelity which simultaneously can uphold a villain’s reputation while condemning a good woman to isolation and social ostracization; men and all behind the guise of a Tale. It is quite possible that without her preface, Opie’s work on The Father and Daughter, could have been read and received in a similar but more critical manner, in turn possibly effecting its potential legacy as an early eighteenth-century feminist novel.