A Simple Story

In scenes charged with understated erotic tension, A Simple Story - by groundbreaking playwright and novelist Elizabeth Inchbald - intertwines the tales of the flirtatious Miss Milner who falls in love with her guardian, a Roman Catholic priest and aristocrat, and of their daughter Matilda who, banished from her father's sight, craves his love. In her use of dramatic methods-expressive gestures, delayed revelations and economical dialogues-to present these two versions of the same power-struggle between an older father-lover figure and a young girl, Inchbald achieves a psychological intensity and subtlety of characterization rarely found in other late eighteenth-century novelists.