Introduction

42
Vanessa Mangione
oppressive patriarchal system. 28 Sir Everard, Elinor’s uncle, points out that his
female relatives have been acting in extreme and for him incomprehensible ways
since Glenarvon’s appearance:
that lawless gang – those licentious democrats – those rebellious libertines;
have imposed on the inordinate folly of my wife and daughters, who, struck
mad, like “gave in the orgies of Bacchus, are running wild about the country,
their hair disheveled, their heads ornamented with green cockades …
and Lady St. Clare, to the same of her sex and me, the property of a recruiting
sergeants employed by one of that nest of serpents at the abbey, to delude
others, and all, I believe, occasioned by that arch fiend, Glenarvon.
(109)
As an icon of the Irish revolution Glenarvon appears to women as a violent force
of emancipation; that is the reason why a big part of his attraction for women lies
in his political enthusiasm. As Judson puts it fittingly “he stimulates wives and
daughters of the gentry to mutiny … Glenarvon’s presence spurs women to break
out” (161). However, Helen Small demonstrates that he is more than a fatal seducer.
He quickly becomes the leader of the Irish uprising against the oppressive
English rule and his main impact on others is to “drive them to madness of one
kind or another” (118).
Nonetheless, Lamb tries to demonstrate through Glenarvon’s appearance how
unprepared “proper” and “virtuous” women are for the world. Calantha, never
having been harmed by a man before or confronted with sexual desire, sees men
as harmless creatures. Being the innocent girl she was raised to be, the narrator
describes her as follows:
All that was base or mean, she, from her soul despised; a fearless spirit
raised her, as she fondly imagined, above the vulgar herd; self confident,
she scarcely deigned to bow the knee before her God; and man, as she read
about him in history, appeared too weak, too trivial to inspire either alarm
or admiration. (30)
A virtuous girl who shrinks away from everything evil and wrong, Calantha, in her
naiveté, has no understanding of the things which occur around her. Girls like her,
kept intentionally ignorant, are defenceless when left on their own, too trusting,
and too inexperienced. While she might not consider that other people would be
able to harm her deliberately and just for the fun of it, Lamb shows how easily
these girls can become prey in male games of which they understand nothing.
Gondimar, an acquaintance of Calantha, describes her virtues to Viviani, Glenar-
28 Various critics have discussed that the Irish uprising is a metaphor for female oppression, a
revolution against a tyrannical, patriarchal system (England). For further discussions of the Irish
rebellion being a struggle for female independence see, among others, Caroline Franklin, Gishlane
McDayter, and Gary Kelly.