The Romance of the Forest

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of illness, death, and death by suicide. 

Adeline is the chief protagonist of the novel and its heroine. She is 19 when the story opens. She is very beautiful, with a slender figure, dark auburn hair, and a graceful manner. The narrator describes her looks and manner as very affecting to those around her; “The languor of sorrow threw a melancholy grace upon her features, that appealed immediately to the heart; and there was a penetrating sweetness in her blue eyes, which indicated an intelligent and amiable mind” (9). She also has “a good understanding and an amiable heart” (29).

Her resilient spirit complements this combination of beauty, intelligence, and pleasant manner. Despite all her troubles, “[h]er mind had not lost by long oppression that elastic energy, which resists calamity” (9). Even in affliction, Adeline has a generally happy nature that can adapt to her circumstances. She is sensitive to beauty as well as suffering, and events tend to deeply affect her. For example, she weeps when Madame La Motte is unkind to her, and she falls ill several times due to her affliction of mind, but she demonstrates fortitude and always manages to recover.