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Critics have long tended to underestimate Rousseau’s impact on British Romantic writing. British novelists have used their art to discuss and evaluate Rousseau’s philosophies and teachings. They have borrowed all the “trappings” that made his work so fascinating. British novelists, like Inchbald, revised his ideas and placed them into new and unexpected contexts. Inchbald demonstrates this in her novel A Simple Story. The plot centers on a female protagonist who falls in love with her tutor. This idea echoes Rousseau’s epistolary novel, Julie; ou Nouvelle Heloise (1761). The love between a female student and a male educator represents an innovational force that leads to a chain of events. The events promise an overthrow of an old regime and start a new and flexible social order. Also like Rousseau, in Inchbald’s novel A Simple Story, the second half retracts many bold statements made in the first half. Rousseau’s and Inchbald’s female protagonist suffer greatly in the first half and are redeemed during the second half. Both women were controversial figures because of choices they made to “corrupt themselves.” Both authors could have depicted these women in a less controversial way if they had simply been the victims of a seduction scheme. Inchbald and Rousseau are authors willing to condone such wanton behavior. (Mortensen)
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