Like Shelley's novel Lodore (1835), Falkner charts a young woman's education under a tyrannical father figure.[1] As a six-year-old orphan, Elizabeth Raby prevents Rupert Falkner from committing suicide; Falkner then adopts her and brings her up to be a model of virtue. However, she falls in love with Gerald Neville, whose mother Falkner had unintentionally driven to her death years before.