Original Sin and Feminine Virtue in Hannah More’s Coelebs in Search of a Wife

Though rarely read today, Hannah More’s Coelebs in Search of a Wife was one of the bestselling novels of the early nineteenth century. This essay explores an underexamined tension within More’s evangelical novel: its expectation that exemplary Christian women, such as the heroine Lucilla Stanley, be angelically good yet wracked with guilt over their sinfulness. Drawing upon the writings of More’s friends and collaborators, William Wilberforce and John Newton, this essay ties the inconsistencies in Lucilla’s characterization to broader tensions within evangelical thought—mixed messages that evangelical women had to grapple with throughout much of the nineteenth century.