Style
Smith's novels were praised for their descriptions of landscapes, a technique new to the novel in the late eighteenth century. In Emmeline, the heroine's identity is formed by her encounters with nature, necessitating intricate descriptions of the heroine's mind and surrounding nature. Smith's descriptions were particularly literary, drawing on Thomas Gray's Memoirs of the Life and Writing of Mr. Gray (1775), William Gilpin's Observations on the River Wye (1782), and Edmund Burke's A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (1757). For example, Emmeline observes that the storm she sees from the Isle of Wight, has "grandeur gratified her taste for the sublime", indicating a Burkean view of nature. In the scene, Godolphin, a naval officer, assumes authority and rescues a foundering party. Burke had associated the sublime with masculinity and the beautiful with femininity; Smith follows him here and indicates to the reader, via the setting, that Godolphin is the hero. However, Smith challenges these strict gender conventions, for example, when she has Emmeline decide to care for Adelina and disregard the social risk involved. Smith describes nature precisely, accurately listing flowers and trees, but she also adds "an emotional and political colouring". As Fletcher explains, "To be in Nature is to recognise, to learn and ultimately to choose. Her protagonists must look at the forms of nature to find themselves. In this sense Smith is an early Romantic".
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