Memoirs of Emma Courtney (Oxford World's Classics) [Paperback]

Mary Hays' "Memoirs of Emma Courtney" is a very subtle book which communicates ideas on empiricism, reason and gender in ways that on a first blush may seem dated yet untimely, but which go beyond even the more unconventional views of her time...and ours. The fervor of the novel reaches its apex when while addressing her lover Emma finds herself reproached for wishing misery upon herself by torturing her independence and constitution with passions that are fanciful and peculiar to the romantic ideals woman are reared to entertain. Her lover, Augustus Harley, chides her for consenting to resign her hopes of happiness upon such sensational affairs. Her response canvasses some of the most distinguished and complex elocutions on the nature of identity, the striving for happiness, and the insuppressable desire to share the pleasures of the intellect and the heart with another. The perverse struggles she contends with is one where reason and sensibility become beset by passions which are cultivated by experience and education alike. She is not your typical women and she is charged with lacking the heroic temper that is necessary to rationalize and live as if she were a stoic detached enlightened machine. She refuses to allow for that and suffers all-the-more because of it. It is precicely in this struggle that her identity becomes consolidated and eventually unravels - her inability to understand why the heart makes of her a dupe, and why such foolishness is impossible to supress. There are many novels of the 18th century by women that rehash this theme but none do so (and that includes Jane Austen) with the same force and violence that affects the internal struggle Emma Courtney suffers. The way she expresses herself and the way she denies herself are implicated in a romantic mystique which she cannot find peace through. The wit of the protagonist is sensible and untamed - even her scandalous claim that soldiers are murderers (while privy to a conversation on the salve trade) offers wisdom that she feels she must not apologize for if only she speaks in consonance with the labors of reason. She is obviously repudiated for her effrontery and so on and so on, but it all serves to establish a starker contrast with the foolish flights of the heart which go nowhere and take the intellect wherever they flee.
The book caused a scandal for among other things its description of infanticide and suicide. Correctly a dissatisfied reviewer has intimating that the novel rushes to its close with melodramatic excesses, but this is fitting in so that it precipitously overstates the destructive forces of passion. That the novel has glaring stylistic faults is undoubted. It does however provide a narrrative that entertains and rivets our interests by several ploys and deveices which are particular to 18th century novels. It is a book that should be read for its literary values (which are commendable relatively speaking) and as a historical document which contextualizes the philosophical, social and gender-specific debates of its time.
Of the publications in print 3 are of note: The Oxford which is annotated sufficiently; the Broadview which traces the history of its construction and ideas by reprinting correspondences with Godwin and abetted by other writings of Hays; College Publishing also has published the book in conjunction with Adeline Mowbray (by Amelia Opie) and the narrative in this case is interspersed with brief descriptions and inscriptions that clarify the text but which make it feel more like a textbook than a novel. The cult of Jane Austen is still very strong, but this novel gives us a less structured and less aesthetically compact understanding of what really went through the mind of a woman who hoped to think for herself - in essence Emma Courtney is none-too-sure what that means and yet she tries to make sense of it...

Any fan of Mary Wollstonecraft should turn next to books like this one. Hays's novel is part of the first wave of responses to *A Vindication of the Rights of Woman* (1792) and shows that Wollstonecraft could produce thoughtful responses from British radicals that balance the unthinking ones from conservatives. With Amelia Opie's *Adeline Mowbray*, this novel tells us much about early British feminism and its interest in the novel. Broadview's texts, furthermore, are excellent and provide wonderful supporting materials; this one is no exception.

I usually love reading books written pre-20th Century, as this one was (1796) but I didn't really enjoy this one as much as I expected. Even though it caused a mild scandal when first published, it is (naturally) rather tame by today's standards. The heroine's great crime is to declare her love for a man before he declares his. How shocking!

The book is written as a series of letters to her beloved's son telling him about her great crime, in order to save him from making the same mistakes. I did admire the way she examined and analyzed her feelings, and how she could stand back and see how her actions didn't always coincide with her intentions. She just loved this guy passionately and she couldn't talk herself out of it, no matter how hard she tried. It got to be rather tedious though, after a while, and I wished she could just get over it and get on with her life.

All the melodrama in the book comes in the last thirty pages, which is such a contrast to the mild, slow-paced rest of the book. It seemed very foreign to the first part, like the author felt she ought to throw in some action at long last. All in all, it was okay, but not great.