“The following novel is offered to the public as a Moral Tale.” 

In what she terms the novel’s “Advertisement,” Edgeworth clearly focuses the reader on the narrative as a teaching tool. Finish the novel, Edgeworth promises, and live a better life.

“Clarence Hervey might have been more than a pleasant young man, if he had not been smitten with the desire of being thought superior in every thing, and of being the most admired person in all companies.”

Early on, Hervey is dismissed as another superficial popinjay. In a narrative that tracks the moral redemption of several key players, no redemption is more impressive or more complicated than Hervey’s growth from an annoying and superficial dandy to a man worthy of Belinda’s affection.

“Do you think that I don’t see plainly as any of you that Belinda Portman’s a composition of art and affectation.” 

At the grand masquerade ball, Hervey reveals his basest character flaw: his need to judge others by criteria that is skewed by his need for external validation. His inability to appreciate Belinda at this point measures how far he has to grow.