As the moral center of a moral fable, a narrative designed to teach rather than entertain, Belinda Portman can seem to a contemporary audience at best admirable, at worst cold and even unbelievable. Because she is conceived as a teaching tool, a model for how a young woman could be, even ought to be, Belinda Portman lacks traits contemporary readers expect in a fictional character: psychological depth, motivational complexity, and emotional growth.

Belinda, at 17, begins and ends the novel the same: She is a resourceful, independent, spirited, sagacious young woman with a generous and forgiving heart that is open to the experience of others. As her friendship with Lady Delacour and her brief engagement to Vincent reveals, she willingly listens to the joys and sorrows of others and hesitates to judge their flaws. She is quick to forgive slights in an upper-class society where grudges are routinely sustained for years. Her efforts to reform the morally bankrupt life of Lady Delacour, and to restore the woman to both her husband and her surviving child, reveals Belinda’s moral nature and her commitment to fixing Lady Delacour’s lifestyle. That she succeeds is a measure of her determination and her dedication.